The sources say the Tatars under Hulagu entered Baghdad in 656 AH, and that the caliph al-Musta'sim, the last Abbasid caliph in Baghdad, was killed 1 2 3. Al-Suyuti relates that they were two hundred thousand, that the caliph's army went out and was routed, and that they entered Baghdad on the day of Ashura 1. Tareq al-Suwaidan dates the great assault to Tuesday 22 Muharram, 2 February 1258 CE, not the day al-Suyuti gives 4 5. In al-Suyuti the vizier advised the caliph to placate them, so the caliph went out to Hulagu with a group of notables, and the jurists and leading men, summoned "to attend the contract", were beheaded 5. Then the sword was loosed on Baghdad, the killing lasted about forty days, and the caliph was trampled to death 5.
In Ibn Khaldun, Hulagu advanced on Iraq in 652 AH, and in 655 AH a letter reached him with the counsel of the vizier Ibn al-Alqami, urging him on to Baghdad 2. Ibn Khaldun says the city was given over to plunder for days, and that the books of learning kept in the treasuries were thrown into the Tigris 3. Al-Suyuti puts the dead at more than a million, while al-Suwaidan holds the figures are not free of exaggeration, the lowest being four hundred thousand 5 6. Al-Suyuti calls it a calamity unlike any that had struck Islam, and says the world had no caliph until the caliphate was set up in Egypt in Rajab 659 AH, a break of three and a half years 5 7 8.
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